literature

The Inconvenience of Being Dead

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    It had been an off kind of day up until this point, but to be fair, Oscar had never planned on waking up dead.

                Up till now, Oscar’s day had been mediocre at best and disastrous at worst.  He had missed his alarm this morning and had to rush out the door to get to work.  On his way there, he had almost hit two separate cats.  Two separate cats.  Almost hitting one cat was enough, but two?  In retrospect, this should have been his first sign that something was amiss.

                Once he got to work, his boss chewed him out for being late, in the usual, condescending way, where he never actually said anything negative to Oscar, but strongly implied that he was the closest thing to a horrible failure the company had ever seen.

                “Oscar, great to see you,” said his boss, fat fingers steepling together.  “Wish I could have seen you about…” he checked his watch.  “…eighteen minutes ago.”  He laughed.

                Oscar smiled weakly, aware that he was being reprimanded.  “I’m sorry,” he began, “but I got a little held up, and—”

                “Oh, no,” he chuckled.  “No, I understand.  There’s always a proper reason, right?  Always a reason with you, Oscar.  I understand completely.  I’ve grown to expect only more of the same quality of work from you—that’s very consistent.” He patted Oscar presumptuously on the shoulder.  “Work hard today!”

                From that point, Oscar worked sullenly at his desk, dutifully avoiding conversation with anyone else or especially, with his boss.  He cut his finger on the memo sent from the office, which announced a meeting at four.  Oscar was supposed to leave at five; he rather believed this wasn’t going to happen. 

                On his lunch break, Oscar tried to flirt with Vanessa and failed miserably.  Instead of inviting her on a date to the movies, he got himself deleted from her phone contacts.  He had accidentally called her Susan and she had been grossly offended; Susan was his cousin, with whom he had just spent the weekend.  Vanessa didn’t believe him.

                “That is the oldest excuse in the book, Oz!” she yelled.  “I can’t believe you would try to date two girls at the same time!”

                “But I’m telling you,” Oscar insisted.  “Susan is my cousin.  I went to visit her and my uncle at the lake over the weekend.  We had such a good time, that I forgot—”

                “I’m sure you did!” huffed Vanessa.  “You know what—never mind.”  She picked up her things.  “You can go to the movies with Susan.  Count me out.”

                The meeting, as predicted, lasted almost three hours.  Oscar thought it had been mostly fruitless, and mainly filled with old men pointing at photographs and charts.  He had taken notes, but he still wasn’t sure what had happened.  He might have dozed off a couple of times.

                Oscar’s drive home was somewhat less eventful than his drive to work, at least for a while.  While he was driving through town, thinking about seeking new employment, a skateboarder rolled into the road and Oscar swerved to avoid him.  He hit a nearby telephone pole with fifty-miles-per-hour worth of force; the impact killed him instantly.

                Oscar didn’t notice the change at first; all he noticed was that he wasn’t in his car, and that he couldn’t see that darn skateboarder anywhere.  The next thing he noticed was that the sky was black instead of blue, and the city lights which illuminated the sidewalk were not those of his regular city.  It was a full three minutes before he spoke.  “Where am I?”

                “Oh, me, oh my,” cried a voice from the shadows.  As Oscar turned to look, he was startled to find himself face-to-face with a skeleton.  Almost an image from a child’s Halloween poster, the skeleton was completely bare except for a bowler hat with a long, purple feather in it.  Its hollow eyes fixed on Oscar’s face as its jaw chattered and clattered with every movement.  “I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you, my friend, are dead!”  The skeleton laughed; from its voice, it seemed to be male.  He extended a bony hand.  “Welcome to the Underworld!”

                Oscar stared at the hand incredulously.  “I am not dead,” he insisted.  “I’m going to go home and make dinner and watch television.”

                “Maybe before,” said the skeleton man, “but now, you are extremely occupied with being deceased.”  He cackled again.  “Oh, by the way—” The skeleton bowed low with an unexpected flexibility, snatching his hat from atop his head and holding it out.  “My name is Seymour.  Seymour Bones!”  Another raucous chuckle erupted from his bony jaws. 

                Oscar was not amused.  “Hilarious,” he said.  “What’s your real name?”

                “I don’t remember,” said Seymour.  “I been dead so long, it’s like I never had one.  But enough on that later.”  He grabbed Oscar by the elbow and started to pull him down the streets, which Oscar now saw were paved with bits and flecks of bone.  “I gotta show you the city!  But first—” Seymour stopped short, causing Oscar to stumble forward.  “You have to get yourself painted.  There’s a ceremony for the new dead tonight and you’re gonna be in it, my boy!”

                Oscar’s head was spinning; thus far, being dead was the most stressful experience of his life.  “Ceremony?  Paint?  Can we slow down for a second?  I just need to take this in.”

                “Yeah, I know,” said Seymour apologetically.  “It always takes folks a little bit of time to get used to the idea.  You’re not alive anymore, you won’t be marrying the girl of your dreams, all that.  But the good news is, you get to hang with us for eternity!  Good old Ciudad de Muerta is a swinging place, you know.”

                “…Do all the cities down here have Spanish names?”

                “Nah, nah, just a few.  The fun ones,” added Seymour.  “Are you coming or what?”

                Oscar glanced around, at the tall buildings and the pitch black sky.  He looked over at Seymour, too; it was something of an uncanny experience to be talking to a skeleton, but all things considered, he supposed the afterlife could have been worse.  In the distance, he could hear upbeat jazz music, though he couldn’t discern from where it originated.  “…Yeah,” said Oscar finally.  “Yeah, I’m coming.”

                He followed Seymour through the winding streets of Ciudad de Muerta, barely keeping up with the skeleton’s quick run.  As he looked around him, he saw other skeletons and people like him, ranging from the recently-deceased to the long-decomposing to the clean, white skeleton that Seymour was.  It dawned on him that Seymour was probably hundreds of years old.  He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

                Eventually, Seymour brought Oscar to a building painted bright purple and decorated with yellow and orange images of eyes and hands.  Green and red swirls adorned the borders of the door and window, which was labeled Madame Alicia’s Tattoos and Body Art.  Seymour, though without skin or muscle, seemed to beam from ear to ear upon arriving.  “Come on inside,” he said.  “You’ll just love Alicia.”

                Oscar decided to take Seymour’s word for it.  So far, he wasn’t “just loving” any part of this, but he was willing to have an open mind.  There wasn’t anything else to do, really.

                Inside the store, beads and dolls hung everywhere.  White pieces of paper adorned the walls, displaying designs and images to be applied to Alicia’s customers.  Alicia herself sat in the back of the store, carefully painting a series of intricate patterns on the bone of the customer in front of her.  While cloaked in the pale of death, she had browned skin and stiff black hair; one of her eyes was missing, and the other was covered in a milky film.  Some of her skin and muscle had fallen away, and her left arm was completely exposed, down to the bone.  She smiled warmly as she saw Seymour enter, and looked with interest on Oscar.  “Hello, Seymour,” she said.  “Who’s your friend?”

                “He’s new,” explained Seymour.  Despite his lack of facial features, he seemed to wink at her.  “Just kicked the bucket a few minutes ago.”

                “Oh,” said Alicia sympathetically.  She stopped painting the skeleton in front of her.  “That must be very jarring for you.”

                “I’m working through it,” agreed Oscar. 

                “Well, you’re always welcome here,” said Alicia.  “I guess that means you’re here for the ceremonial paint?”

                He nodded hesitantly, glancing at Seymour.  “I guess so.”

                “Give him a good one, Alicia,” said Seymour, tipping his hat.  “I’m gonna go off to greet the newbies.  Town square at midnight, fella!” he called to Oscar.  “Don’t be late!”  Without waiting for any kind of response, he gallivanted out the door, leaving Oscar alone with Alicia and her skeleton customer.

                “Have a seat,” Alicia invited him.  “What’s your name?”  She returned to her painting.  The skeleton shifted in its seat.

                “Oscar,” he said, relieved that someone had finally asked. 

                “Oscar,” she repeated, tasting the name on her tongue.  “I like that name.”  She dipped her brush into a pot of paint.  “How did you die?”

                “I hit a telephone pole,” he replied.  “I was swerving to avoid a skateboarder.”

                “Hmm,” she murmured.  “What year is it?”

                He blinked.  “2014.”

                “Oh,” she laughed.  “I died about thirty years ago.  I was just curious.”  She looked up.  “I drowned.”

                “I’m sorry…”  Oscar said feebly.  He had never been in this situation before.  He had been to funerals, but he had never had to give his condolences to the corpse.

                She laughed.  “Don’t worry.  You’re fine.”  She put her paints away and smiled at the skeleton.  “You’re all done, Sylvia.”

                “Thanks, Alicia,” said the skeleton, standing with a creak of bones.  “It’s beautiful!”  She stood up and walked out, waving to Oscar.  “Good luck,” she said.

                “Thank you,” said Oscar.  He approached Alicia with the respectful caution with which one would approach a viper.  “So…I’m supposed to be painted?”

                She nodded.  “Traditional body paint for the ceremony of the new dead.  Every night, we light up the square and have music and dancing to celebrate the recently deceased.  All the newcomers wear body paints and march in a parade.”  She reached for a new set of colors, shrugging her shoulders.  “I think it’s fun.”

                “Fun?  I’m still wrapping my head around being dead.  This is madness!  Are you sure I’m not dreaming?”

                Alicia smiled.  “That’s how it always is.  You get used to it.”  She dipped her brush in the white paint.  “Hold still.”  She began to coat his skin with white paint, her one glossy eye looking intently over his face.  “You’re very handsome—don’t talk, I’m trying to paint you.  Just a few minutes.  Your eyes are a beautiful color.  It’ll be a real shame to see them fall away.  Oh, don’t look so surprised—it happens to everyone.  You’ve got a few years still.”  She continued to talk like this to him, in the same casual, calm tone of voice, until at last she pulled away from him, fetching a mirror from under her chair.  “We’re done.  What do you think?”

                When Oscar saw himself in the mirror, he nearly gasped aloud.  His face was painted completely white, with his eyes and lips outlined in black.  Intricate and colorful patterns swirled and spiraled around his features, forming into flowers and teardrops and flourishes of paisley.  For all the world, Oscar looked as though he had been immediately transformed into a Mexican calavera

                Alicia peered around the mirror at him.  “Do you like it?”

                Oscar was speechless.  “Uh—yes.  It’s beautiful.  Where did you learn to paint like that?”

                She shrugged modestly.  “It’s what I did in my previous life.  I was a painter.  I’m glad I can continue doing it in death as well.”  She stood, helping him up with her skeletal hand.  “Head on down to the square—you’ll know it when you see it—and I’ll meet you there soon.  I love to watch the parade.”

                Hesitant to leave Alicia or the safety of her odd little shop, Oscar walked outside into the warm, incandescent light of the streets, trying to ignore the vastness of the queer black sky.  He could feel the paint, tight against his skin, every bit as cold and strange as it would have been had he been painted in his life.  Frankly, he was still unconvinced that he was dead at all; except for the strange environment and walking skeletons, nothing in the Underworld seemed different.  There were city sounds, and there was music; there were people bustling to and fro; there were even animals.  Granted, many of them were skeletal or in some other state of decomposition, but they were animals, nonetheless.  There were more cats than Oscar had expected.  For some reason he had always clung to the “cats have nine lives,” bit.

                As Alicia had predicted, Oscar had no trouble finding the town square.  Lights and streamers were strung to buildings and lampposts, and a local band stood on the sidewalk, playing festive music that sounded almost as familiar as it was foreign to Oscar.  A huge crowd had already begun to gather, made of dancers and musicians, performers and common folk.  Several dozen men and women with their faces painted like Oscar’s stood somewhere around the middle of the street.  Oscar figured that must be the place to be.

                As he nestled in with the tight-knit crowd, he stayed quiet as he listened to the murmurs of the throng: one man had died of old age; the woman next to him had died of cancer.  Oscar was astonished at the number of children around him, with deaths ranging from accident to illness.  From what he could gather, it seemed they would be stuck in their childish bodies forever.  He felt equally sorry for the elderly who had just arrived.  As friendly as the Underworld seemed to be, Oscar felt death could get pretty lonely, eventually.

                Suddenly, Oscar felt a long, sharp elbow jab into his side.  He turned to find himself face-to-face with the same bony visage as had greeted him earlier today, complete with ornate bowler hat.  “Heya, buddy, glad to see you made it!” cried Seymour.  “I was afraid we’d have to start without ya!”

                Oscar smiled weakly.  “Yeah, I made it,” he replied.  “Alicia sure did a good job with my makeup.”

                “I’m not surprised!” said Seymour.  “She’s always got an eye for these sorts of things.”  He cackled, doubling over, supporting himself with a bony hand on Oscar’s shoulder.  “Get it?” he choked.  “An eye!  Alicia’s only got one—”

                “I got it,” Oscar interrupted.  “I thought she did some lovely work.”

                “You can bet your butt she did,” Seymour agreed.  “Ooh—better get out of the way.  Sounds like we’re starting!”  Sure enough, as soon as he’d said so, the music blasted in a blaring crescendo, and the row of new dead marched forward.  Seymour scuttled hurriedly out of line—as Oscar watched him dart onto the sidewalk, he caught sight of Alicia, standing pleasantly nearby.  She waved at him when she saw him—delighted, Oscar waved back.  He was glad to have someone present that he was comfortable with.

                The procession was something to behold, for everyone involved.  Acrobats flipped and flew through the air.  Musicians filled the street with a sort of flavorful, festive jazz that Oscar felt he could listen to for the rest of his—ah—existence.  People on the sidewalks cheered and hooted, waving banners and calling the names of some of the dead.  He heard Alicia’s voice more than once, and was immediately elated. 

                After some time, the group came to a stop in front of a long table, all filled up with food.  Almost every kind of dish was present—jambalaya, pomegranate, Chow Mein, spaghetti, oatmeal, pancakes—if you could imagine it, it was there.  Oscar was salivating at the mere sight of it, before its smell even drifted into his nostrils.  Before the table stood a tall, regal looking fellow with an impressive mustache and a wide-brimmed hat.  Besides his ornate scarf, he was dressed all in black, and watched the parade with a sort of amused boredom, as though this was something he had seen too many times to thoroughly enjoy.

                When the music had finally stopped, and the crowd had finally hushed, the impressive man spoke.  His voice was deep and smooth, and while he did not seem to be shouting, it carried all the way down the street.  “Lost souls,” he said, “I welcome you to this, my humble city, Ciudad de Muerta.  I hope you have not been too disconcerted by your transition.”  He paused, and the audience chuckled obediently.  “Nevertheless, there is but one final decision you must make before becoming Deceased forever.  Here before me—” he spread his arms in indication of the table, “—I have a buffet of the finest foods on earth and off it; you may eat to your hearts’ content.  However, this is no ordinary food.  This is the food of the Underworld, and should you partake of it, you will never be able to leave.”

                A murmur swept over the crowd of whitewashed faces.  Never leave?  No chance of return?  Black paint dripped down furrowed brows, and the merriment drained from their countenances.  Oscar was similarly concerned. 

                “Of course,” rumbled the figure, “you may always choose not to eat, in which case you will be revived.  It happens all the time, of course, and there are always ghostly visits to the mortal world—only possible if you do not eat the Underworld food.”  He folded his hands.  “Choose wisely.”

                The line began to file past the table, and Oscar caught snatches of conversation here and there.  “I wasn’t ready,” said one woman.  “I know they can cure me of my disease.  I won’t eat.”

                “I lived my life,” said the old man.  “I’ll eat, drink, and be merry!”

                Similar comments, decisive or not, rippled down the queue, until Oscar found himself standing at the table, staring at all the tantalizing food.  Of course, he had been rather rudely yanked from his life; he would like more than anything else to return to it.  Then again, he wasn’t exactly fulfilled, and it had been a few hours since his death.  What if he chose not to eat and all he got was a “ghostly visit?”

                Oscar looked around nervously, aware that he was holding up the line.  He caught a glance at Seymour, who gave a hearty nod and a thumbs-up.  He looked at Alicia, who was watching with a rueful look on her face.  He looked all around him, at the dead and the lost, enjoying the festival and paying attention to those who would go and those who would stay.  Ciudad de Muerta hadn’t been his ideal destination.

                …But now that he was here, he found that he rather liked it.  Being dead wasn’t quite so bad, and who knew?  Maybe he would even make some new friends.

                Oscar picked up a handful of pomegranate seeds, running them between his fingers and savoring the juicy red stain they left.  Here’s to new beginnings, he thought, and popped them in his mouth.

I'll probably change the title eventually, because the story didn't do what I originally meant for it to do and thus doesn't mean exactly the same thing.  

This is a short story I wrote because I love Dia de los Muertos and because I don't write nearly enough stories about dead people.  Also because I hadn't written much recently and I wanted to get back into it.  I'm not thrilled with the ending but I think it's okay for right now; I may change it as well.  Obviously you folks are smart people, you can pick up what I'm laying down.

And yeah the guy with the mustache is Death.  He doesn't want to talk about it.
© 2014 - 2024 Tigerach
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ZeroMKX's avatar
Being dead?

Sucks don't it Problem?